Article first published online: 16 JUN 2015A tropolone group has been employed for the first time as an anchoring group for dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs). The DSSC based on a porphyrin, YD2-o-C8T, with a tropolone moiety exhibited a power-conversion efficiency of 7.7 %, which is only slightly lower than that observed for a reference porphyrin, YD2-o-C8, with a conventional carboxylic group. More importantly, YD2-o-C8T was found to be superior to YD2-o-C8 with respect to DSSC durability and binding ability to TiO2 . These results unambiguously demonstrate that tropolone is a highly promising dye-anchoring group for DSSCs in terms of device durability as well as photovoltaic performance.

This is the peer reviewed version of the following article: Higashino, T., Fujimori, Y., Sugiura, K., Tsuji, Y., Ito, S. and Imahori, H. (2015), Tropolone as a High-Performance Robust Anchoring Group for Dye-Sensitized Solar Cells. Angew. Chem. Int. Ed., 54: 9052–9056, which has been published in final form at http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/anie.201502951. This article may be used for non-commercial purposes in accordance with Wiley Terms and Conditions for Self-Archiving.